I can’t speak for Matt, but after he mentioned this in our conversation, I started reading the book The Goal, a “business novel” which is supposed to teach you the theory of constraints. I’ve found it to be a reasonably good read, but I’m not sure how broad its applicability is outside of manufacturing. If you don’t work in manufacturing, I think you could plausibly get a large fraction of the value you’d get from reading The Goal by understanding the ideas in this Wikipedia article.
I’m not sure how broad its applicability is outside of manufacturing
Technically, the book The Goal only addresses one application of TOC, rather than the sum of TOC or its techniques. (Certainly, the five focusing steps are generally applicable problem-solving tools.)
Most of the TOC body of knowledge is actually a set of tools for doing systems analysis and planning in group settings, based on formal cause-effect logic represented in diagram form. The details of such tools can be more readily found in textbooks like Thinking for a Change or The Logical Thinking Process. (Neither is a novel, and both are written by people other than Goldratt. Personally I find Goldratt’s novels the more enjoyable reads, but they necessarily leave out lots of details you need in order to do anything besides apply the specific generic solutions they derive.)
And TOC’s Drum-Buffer-Rope scheduling model (as described in The Goal) is only one of TOC’s “generic business solutions”—there are others for other aspects of business, including project management, accounting, inventory management, and even marketing. They can generally be applied without needing to reconstruct them from first principles, though the business novels that introduce those solutions will generally show a portion of the working needed to derive them.
The two thinking tools, though, that I’ve personally found most valuable are the Prerequisite Tree and the Evaporating Cloud. The first one is basically the idea that you can make a plan simply by listing all the reasons why you can’t do something, and then turning those around to identify subgoals. (Which you can then continue objecting to, recursively!) If you are as inclined to negative thinking as I am, this is no small thing. ;-)
The second one is a method for surfacing and questioning your assumptions about the incompatibility of yours (or yours and someone else’s) conflicting goals, and about the available means of satisfying your preferences. I have taught it to others as a creativity tool, because essentially that’s what it is. By forcing you to clarify the conceptual relationships that lead to a conflict, it gives you a handful of specific points to question your assumptions with.
(I have used the other tools on occasion as well, and adapted some of the generic business solutions to improve business situations before, but far less frequently.)
Theory of Constraints? Example of how he used it to improve?
I can’t speak for Matt, but after he mentioned this in our conversation, I started reading the book The Goal, a “business novel” which is supposed to teach you the theory of constraints. I’ve found it to be a reasonably good read, but I’m not sure how broad its applicability is outside of manufacturing. If you don’t work in manufacturing, I think you could plausibly get a large fraction of the value you’d get from reading The Goal by understanding the ideas in this Wikipedia article.
Technically, the book The Goal only addresses one application of TOC, rather than the sum of TOC or its techniques. (Certainly, the five focusing steps are generally applicable problem-solving tools.)
Most of the TOC body of knowledge is actually a set of tools for doing systems analysis and planning in group settings, based on formal cause-effect logic represented in diagram form. The details of such tools can be more readily found in textbooks like Thinking for a Change or The Logical Thinking Process. (Neither is a novel, and both are written by people other than Goldratt. Personally I find Goldratt’s novels the more enjoyable reads, but they necessarily leave out lots of details you need in order to do anything besides apply the specific generic solutions they derive.)
And TOC’s Drum-Buffer-Rope scheduling model (as described in The Goal) is only one of TOC’s “generic business solutions”—there are others for other aspects of business, including project management, accounting, inventory management, and even marketing. They can generally be applied without needing to reconstruct them from first principles, though the business novels that introduce those solutions will generally show a portion of the working needed to derive them.
The two thinking tools, though, that I’ve personally found most valuable are the Prerequisite Tree and the Evaporating Cloud. The first one is basically the idea that you can make a plan simply by listing all the reasons why you can’t do something, and then turning those around to identify subgoals. (Which you can then continue objecting to, recursively!) If you are as inclined to negative thinking as I am, this is no small thing. ;-)
The second one is a method for surfacing and questioning your assumptions about the incompatibility of yours (or yours and someone else’s) conflicting goals, and about the available means of satisfying your preferences. I have taught it to others as a creativity tool, because essentially that’s what it is. By forcing you to clarify the conceptual relationships that lead to a conflict, it gives you a handful of specific points to question your assumptions with.
(I have used the other tools on occasion as well, and adapted some of the generic business solutions to improve business situations before, but far less frequently.)